


to the dark-walled home of persephone

by hihoplastic



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 00:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hihoplastic/pseuds/hihoplastic
Summary: Hecate stares at her, horror and irritation curling in her stomach, and something that feels strangely like hope. “What have you done?”





	to the dark-walled home of persephone

**Author's Note:**

> \- Inspired by [this amazing art](http://deirdresart.tumblr.com/post/172459519009/hadespersepone-au-in-which-pippa-goddess-of) by deirdresart   
> \- Thank you to raumolirien for being my greek mythology guru

Hecate stares at her, horror and irritation curling in her stomach, and something that feels strangely like hope. ****

“What have you done?”

Pippa blinks at the bite in her tone and frowns. “Nothing,” she says. “I just—”

“You  _ate_  something.”

“No I didn’t,” she says, looks Hecate dead in the eye, a challenge.

Hecate doesn’t answer, bile in her throat, and waves a hand, a small mirror hovering just before Pippa’s face, a smudge of pink frosting on her lower lip.

“Alright, fine,” Pippa huffs, and Hecate dissolves the mirror. “So I ate a donut. It’s not like you don’t have plenty.”

Hecate closes her eyes and tries to breathe through her nose, to calm her shaking hands and oddly shaking heart.

“I told you not to consume  _anything,_ ” she says, low and clipped and Pippa protests, an indignant flush to her cheeks, a strand of hair falling over her eye that Hecate wishes she could brush away.

She startles at the thought and shoves it deep down. She barely knows the woman—knows only that she is bright where Hecate is dark, that she blooms where Hecate hides. She knows she’s the daughter of the harvest, of lush greens and flowers and blue skies for miles and miles.

Knows that she fell through a crack in the Earth, fell and fell and fell until Hecate caught her. That Pippa looked at her with wide eyes, a smile brighter than sun, said, “You saved me.”

She knows, from only a few hours, that Pippa is soft where she is ridgid, warm where she is cold. That she smiles as often as Hecate scowls and everything she touches seems to lean into her, as much as everything Hecate touches seems to cower.

“I don’t understand why you’re so angry,” Pippa says, grabbing a napkin from the table to wipe the corner of her lip.

Hecate’s jaw clenches and she feels her long fingernails dig into her palms.

“You ate food in the Underworld,” Hecate stresses. “Now you cannot leave.”

Pippa stares at her a moment, then laughs. It’s the brightest sound Hecate’s heard in centuries, and she tucks it away, knows it may well be the only time she ever hears it.

“That’s ridiculous,” Pippa says, her smile still wide, and Hecate suddenly hates,  _hates,_  that she will be the one to banish it.

It’s foolish, she thinks. Pippa is nothing to her. The daughter of another goddess, one of many. She isn’t special.

And yet, her smile.

Genuine and somehow fond already, like they’re friends. Like they haven’t known each other mere hours. Like she hasn’t accidentally crashed her way into Hecate’s carefully constructed world and upturned it in moments.

Pippa, Hecate tells herself, is clearly entitled, arrogant, vain, and naive. She isn’t someone Hecate wants to know, and certainly not someone she wants to spend her life with.

And yet she has no choice. Neither of them do, and Hecate’s anger curls around her chest like a living thing.

“It’s the rules,” Hecate says, rules in place for so long she’s forgotten why, rules she tended to and nurtured like the stargazers on the surface Pippa said she loves. Rules Hecate cannot break,  _will not break,_  not even now.

Pippa’s smile slowly fades the longer Hecate stares at her, expression grim, shoulders drawn tight.

“You’re serious.”

“Deadly.”

Pippa glares at her. “This isn’t funny.”

“I never said it was.”

“You can’t expect me to stay here,” Pippa says, looking around the great hall. “It’s dark and cold and there’s no sunlight—”

“You grow accustomed to it,” Hecate interrupts, doesn’t want to hear the ways in which her home is so unpalatable to everyone else.

She likes the dark. The greys and blacks and severe looking furniture, the dust that catches in the moonlight through the large, often hidden windows. It’s safe here, in the quiet halls, just her and Morgana and Cerberus, away from everything bright that burns her eyes. Always overcast, the soft pattern of rain often the only sound besides the music she plays, or the low hum of her own voice.

And yet, she’s never felt lonely. Never grieved the loss of the sun or surface.

Has never wanted companionship. Still doesn’t, she tells herself, and certainly not from her.

“I don’t want to grow accustomed to it,” Pippa retorts, folding her arms across her chest. “I want to go home.”

Hecate’s lip curls. “Then you should have thought of that before taking what wasn’t yours.”

“Is that what this is about?” Pippa demands, dropping her arms to gesture toward the table. “You’re mad I took something you have plenty of?”

“You’ve consumed something from this realm,” Hecate snaps, “You no longer exist as you did above; you yourself are fundamentally changed.”

“So it’s a trap.”

Hecate startles. “A trap?”

“Why else would you have food out in the first place if not to trick people?”

Hecate bristles at the accusation in her tone, the blame, and bites back, “Most aren’t arrogant enough to defy my commands. I told you not to touch anything.”

“You didn’t tell me _why._ ”

“That isn’t my responsibility. It’s yours to obey.”

“Obey?” Pippa’s eyes narrow and Hecate wishes she weren’t always so blunt, so careless in her words, “I’m not one of your subjects.”

“But you are a guest in my home. Or rather, you were.”

“And now?”

“A more permanent fixture, I should think.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Hecate gestures to the far side of the room, and the door swings open. “The door is there.”

Pippa glowers, but stomps towards it, through it, only to reappear from a different door on the other side of the room.

Hecate watches as she tries again, and again, even attempts to crawl out a window and winds up stumbling out of the chimney, covered in soot.

Hecate waves a hand and she’s clean again.

For the first time, Pippa looks properly frightened, and Hecate’s heart twinges, feels strange and unwelcome in her chest.

“I understand it’s not ideal—” she starts, but Pippa interrupts with a scoff.

“Ideal? It’s  _hell._  Literally  _hell._ ”

Hecate sniffs, insulted. “That’s a misnomer.”

“There are dead people!”

“Not in my home,” Hecate says indignantly, wrinkling her nose at the very thought. “They live in the village beyond.”

Pippa rolls her eyes. “Oh, well in that case.”

“The dead keep to themselves,” Hecate says. “You needn’t fear them.”

“I might as well be one of them, if I’m trapped here forever,” Pippa says, and Hecate flinches, hard.

“That can be arranged,” she snaps, and immediately feels a spike of guilt at the horror—the fear—on Pippa’s face. Resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose, Hecate sighs and tries to settle her breathing, the magic fizzing under her skin. “You’re in no danger here. And despite what you may think, you are not a prisoner. You may come and go on the grounds as you wish.”

“You just said—”

“You were attempting to leave this realm. If all you wish is to be outside, then you shall be.”

“But I can’t go home,” Pippa says, and Hecate ignores the way her voice trembles.

“No, you cannot.”

“Then how does that differ from a prisoner?”

Hecate doesn’t answer, doesn’t try. She doesn’t have one. “You can go as far as the forest in all directions, but no further.”

“Why not?”

Hecate breathes slowly through her nose and tries not to snap. “As I said, there are rules.”

“But they’re  _your_  rules.”

“Yes.”

“So break them,” Pippa pleads, desperate, and Hecate feels a flair of anger, or hurt. “Let me go, please.”

Hecate stares. At her wide, wet eyes, her trembling hands, her pink dress, stark against the grey.

She thinks of the traditions she’s carried, the rules she’s bound herself to, the ones she needs. Her world is held together by rules—by law and order, structure and discipline. The dead know their place, and for anyone to escape, for any reason, could bring chaos. It isn’t worth it, she tells herself, to destabilize her world on the whim of a pretty girl.

But there’s a softer, selfish part of her that wonders what it might be like to share her world. Someone who knows magic, who appears, at least, to revere it as much as she does

She thinks what it might be like to talk to someone every once in a while.

Even if it is someone who hates her.

“No,” she says, and can’t bring herself to say,  _I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could._

Ignoring the stunned look on Pippa’s face, the ache in her chest, Hecate turns, flinches when Pippa calls out, a crack in her voice,

“You can’t keep me here!”

“Yes,” she says flatly, raising a hand to transfer, her words echoing even as she dissolves into air. “I can.”


End file.
